Advion

By Tom M. Paolangeli

He calls them
“Truth Machines.” Dr. Jack Henion points to a cryptic high tech machine about
the size of a refrigerator. “That’s our first Mass Spectrometer,” he says with
obvious pride. “We bought it back in 1993. We now have seventeen of them.” The
machine emits a loud, though not unpleasant hum. Henion smiles. “That’s the
sound of making money.” Good thing, because each one cost about a half million
dollars.

Henion is
President, CEO and co-founder of Advanced BioAnalytical Services, which was
renamed Advion BioSciences this past March. Theirprimary business has been analyzing
biological samples for the pharmaceutical industry. Henion and partner Tom Kurz
began the company in April of 1993, setting up a laboratory at 15 Catherwood
Road in Lansing. The privately held company was in the black by October, and
has been profitable seven out of its eight years.

Mass Spectrometers
allow a scientist to deduce the original molecular structure of complex
molecules. For example, a blood sample can be analyzed with incredible detail
and accuracy, to show the presence of minute drug compounds.Henion says Mass Spectrometry results are
unchallenged in court, and is far more accurate than other methods, like DNA
analysis. Thus the title, “Truth Machine.” Advion doesn’t manufacture the
machines themselves, but have pioneered technology that vastly increases their
speed and effectiveness.

Henion, also a
Cornell Professor of Toxicology, started the company to take advantage of the
unique patented technology he helped develop in his Cornell lab in the
mid-1980’s,“Electrospray Ionization”
(ESI). It revolutionized the analysis of biological samples, like blood or
urine.

Henion’s expertise
and knowledge about mass spectrometry has meant he’s been asked to testify as
an expert witness at a number of court cases, though it’s not a role he
particularly relishes. He was even subpoenaedfor the O.J. Simpson trial.

“But I got a call
at two in the morning on the night before I was supposed to leave with a
message from one of his assistants saying ‘Judge Ito was sick of science.’”
Henion shakes his head and laughs. “So I just went back to bed.”

While Henion
provides the scientific expertise, his partner Tom Kurz contributes business
savvy. Kurz previously worked in business planning at the corporate
headquarters for GTE (now Verizon) in Stanford CT, and helped launch GTE Health
systems. In 1992 a mutual acquaintance introduced him to Henion. They soon
decided to work together. Kurz put together a business plan in the fall of
1992, began to raise capitol, and they were able to launch Advanced
BioAnalytical Services April 1, 1993.

Now one of the
world’s largest liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) facilities,
Advion’s clients include 13 out of the top 15 pharmaceutical companies. These
companies depend on Advion’s unique expertise in using mass spectrometry
analysis in their quest to develop the next generation of drugs.

Henion
acknowledges that the drug companies have been getting a lot of bad press
lately, but he’s proud of the role his company might play in helping them find
a cure for diabetes, or a way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Or even something
as helpful as developing timed-release pills for certain medications that you
can take just once a day, instead of multiple pills per day.

As part of getting
FDA approval, the pharmaceutical companies will conductdrug trials. Blood samples are taken from
volunteers every hour for twenty-four hours, then analyzed to determine how
much of the drug is in the body at a particular time.

Usually the
results are in terms of nanogramsper
milliliter of blood. The pharmaceutical companies do some of this work
themselves, but they there’s so much to do, they need to outsource part of it.
That’s were Advion comes in.

“We don’t do twenty things, we do just one thing,
very, very well. Also, we hire very carefully, expert people, and we train
them.”

Advion currently has about 75 employees. Henion
knows and appreciates their value.

“We compete with
the pharmaceutical industry for talent. They want people like we have here. So
I have to make it interesting enough that people want to stay around. We treat
people well. Lots of career opportunities.”

While Advion does
tap into the local college graduate pool for talent, their reputation helps
pull in employees from around the world. One person came all the way from South
Africa. Stephen Lowes, Vice President of Bioanalysis, is another long distance
recruit.

“Advion has a
national and international reputation for excellence in liquid chromatography
and mass spectrometry,” Lowes explained. “I personally left the UK to work at
Advion in 1995. People always seemed surprised that I didn’t come to Ithaca
because of Cornell or Ithaca College. I’d heard of Advion (then Advanced
BioAnalytical Services) while working in the LC/MS field in Europe. Two other
Brits here have the same story.”

Advion has kept a
pretty low local profile, but with success and growth it’s poised to become one
of Tompkins County’s major employers of high skilled labor. They are slowly
engulfing the huge structure on Catherwood Road that previously housed an
indoor tennis court, a roller rink, and was later subdivided into store fronts
and office space. Advion keeps knocking down walls as they grow and space
becomes available, and now occupies more than half the building. They have also
just opened a research and development facility in the Cornell Business and
Technology Park on Brown Road, where they will manufacture their own patented
ESI Chips.

Advion has 20
patents or applications for this new chip. Not to be confused with a computer
chip, this is a flat silicon wafer that uses high-voltage electricity and a
special micro nozzle to vastly increase the efficiency of mass spectrometers.

Marketing
Specialist Kathy Henion explains, “The whole point of the chips is to make what
we do faster and better. That means new drugs can be brought to market more
quickly, too.”

Dr. Henion reinforces the point. “This is a
revolutionary advance. We have the potential to increase throughput twenty fold
and maybe fifty to one hundred fold.”

Advion isn’t going
to just keep the chip for their own use - they plan to market it. The chip was
developed to be compatible with any commercial mass spectrometer. To that end
they recently invested two million dollars to set up the 5500 sq. ft. facility
on Brown Road, with clean rooms and special technology to manufacture the
chips. In early May of this year they had their first production run.
Previously they had to rely on Cornell’s nano-fabrication facility to produce
the chips.

The decision to
expand and commercialize the ESI Chip helped prompt the company’s name change
from Advanced BioAnalytical Services to Advion BioSciences. Henion views the
marketing of the new chip as a natural expansion of their quest to remain the
world leader in mass spectrometry.Henion is so confident of Advion’s overall edge that they even intend to
sell this revolutionary chip to their clients and competition. Beyond that, the
potential market for the new chip is huge, with over 10,000 Mass Spectrometers
in the US alone, and two to three times that worldwide.

Kurz is
particularly excited about Advion’s new chip serving the emerging field of
proteomics. While genomics studies genes, proteomics looks at the proteins
created by the genes.

“Disease occurs at
the protein level, not the genetic level, “Kurz explained. “For example, if you
have a liver disease, the key to understanding it is not the genetic code, but
in what proteins are specifically made in that cell. By understanding the
proteins, we can understand the disease, then we can cure it. And the key
technology to studying proteins, is mass spectrometry.”

Protein analysis requires incredibly sensitive
equipment, so low that some of the current technology can’t even see them.
Advion’s new chip not only increases throughput, but allows a staggering
increase in sensitivity. Given those realities, Kurz is understandably quite
excited about Advion’s future.

“Wall Street
analysts are now saying that proteomics will be muchbigger than the genomics effort ever was. And
we have a crucial enabling tool for the proteomics area.”

Advion is actively
looking for investors to help the company expand. Henion says the their initial
meetings with potential investors have gone extremely well.

“Without
exception, these people, who see lots of business plans, get excited about what
we have here. We have an established leadership role, established revenue
stream, and have just invested in a major research and development program.”

Henion envisions
Advion’s increasing success and growth as having a very positive effect on the
local employment scene.

“We’re starting
our new facility at Brown Road with 9 employees. That could easily become 120
over the next few years. And these are high skilled, good paying jobs.”

Any worries about
the future?

“Our radar screen
is pretty realistic and pretty wide. I don’t really have any concerns. Our
technology is solid. We have the best detector in the world.”